Spotlight Central reviewed the band's night at the Grunin Center of the Arts in Toms River, NJ, and the write-up captured exactly what The British Invasion Years hopes every audience feels when the lights go down.
The writer went backstage before the show and sat down with co-founders Lee Scott Howard and Bobby M. As Lee explained it, the first half of the show covers the British Invasion of the 1960s and the second half is the American response to that invasion. Same two-act build they still use every night.
There's a detail in there worth pulling out. Putting this show together took real homework. Lee and Bobby spent serious time researching where each song landed on the charts and what it meant culturally. That's why the set feels less like a greatest-hits jukebox and more like a guided tour of the decade.
And because the motto has always been "all that noise with just four boys," there are no backing tracks. Synthesizers, sound effects, and a digital guitar that, as Lee told the writer, "emulates thirty different kinds of guitars, and at the push of a button will even retune itself."
The recap walked the night song by song. A Beatles opening trio of "A Hard Day's Night," "Can't Buy Me Love" and "Please Please Me," then The Zombies, Manfred Mann, The Troggs, The Kinks, and a first-act closer of "Back in the U.S.S.R." with airplane sound effects. Act II brought the American side roaring back. The Monkees, "Secret Agent Man," "Wooly Bully," "Hang on Sloopy," "Mony Mony," "Born to Be Wild," "Happy Together." Then a Beatles finale and a "Hey Jude" singalong that turned the auditorium into a sea of swaying phone lights.
The best line came from an audience member named Paige. Who, as the writer found out, happens to be Lee's big sister. "I tell people to come to his show not because he's my brother," she said, "but because this group is that good."
Hard to say it better. Read the full write-up at Spotlight Central, then come find out for yourself on the tour dates page.